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By Root 808 0

as confident as she pretended to be during her walk to Temple Street. Katherine Brooke had really been unbearable of late. Again and again Anne, rebuffed, had said, as grimly as Poe’s raven, ‘Nevermore!’ Only yesterday Katherine had been positively insulting at a staff meeting. But in an unguarded moment Anne had seen something looking out of the older girl’s eyes, a passionate, half-frantic something like a caged creature mad with discontent. Anne had spent the first half of the night trying to decide whether to invite Katherine Brooke to Green Gables or not. Finally she fell asleep with her mind irrevocably made up.

Katherine’s landlady showed Anne into the parlour, and shrugged a fat shoulder when she asked for Miss Brooke.

‘I’ll tell her you’re here, but I dunno if she’ll come down. She’s sulking. I told her at dinner tonight that Mrs Rawlins says it’s scandalous the way she dresses for a teacher in Summerside High, and she took it high-and-mighty as usual.’

‘I don’t think you should have told Miss Brooke that,’ said Anne reproachfully.

‘But I thought she ought to know,’ said Mrs Dennis somewhat waspishly.

‘Did you also think she ought to know that the Inspector said she was one of the best teachers in the Maritimes?’ asked Anne. ‘Or didn’t you know it?’

‘Oh, I heard it. But she’s stuck up enough now without making her any worse. Proud’s no name for it – though what she’s got to be proud of I dunno. Of course, she was mad anyhow tonight, because I’d said she couldn’t have a dog. She’s took a notion into her head she’d like to have a dog. Said she’d pay for his rations and see he was no bother. But what’d I do with him when she was in school? I put my foot down. “I’m boarding no dogs,” sez I.’

‘Oh, Mrs Dennis, won’t you let her have a dog? He wouldn’t bother you – much. You could keep him in the basement while she was in school. And a dog really is such a protection at night. I wish you would – please!’

There was always something about Anne Shirley’s eyes when she said ‘please’ that people found hard to resist. Mrs Dennis, in spite of fat shoulders and a meddlesome tongue, was not unkind at heart. Katherine Brooke simply got under her skin at times with her ungracious ways.

‘I dunno why you should worry as to her having a dog or not. I didn’t know you were such friends. She hasn’t any friends. I never had such an unsociable boarder.’

‘I think that is why she wants a dog, Mrs Dennis. None of us can live without some kind of companionship.’

‘Well, it’s the first human thing I’ve noticed about her,’ said Mrs Dennis. ‘I dunno’s I have any awful objection to a dog, but she sort of vexed me with her sarcastic way of asking. “I s’pose you wouldn’t consent if I asked you if I might have a dog, Mrs Dennis?” she sez, haughty-like. Set her up with it! “You’re s’posing right,” sez I, as haughty as herself. I don’t like eating my words any more than most people, but you can tell her she can have a dog if she’ll guarantee he won’t misbehave in the parlour.’

Anne did not think the parlour could be much the worse if the dog did misbehave. She eyed the dingy lace curtains and the hideous purple roses on the carpet with a shiver.

‘I’m sorry for anyone who has to spend Christmas in a boarding-house like this,’ she thought. ‘I don’t wonder Katherine hates the word. I’d like to give this place a good airing. It smells of a thousand meals. Why does Katherine go on boarding here when she has a good salary?’

‘She says you can come up,’ was the message Mrs Dennis brought back, rather dubiously, for Miss Brooke had run true to form.

The narrow, steep stair was repellent. It didn’t want you. Nobody would go up who didn’t have to. The linoleum in the hall was worn to shreds. The little back hall bedroom where Anne presently found herself was even more cheerless than the parlour. It was lit by one glaring, unshaded gas-jet. There was an iron bed with a valley in the middle of it, and a narrow, sparsely draped window looking out on a backyard garden where a large crop of tin cans flourished. But beyond it was a marvellous sky and a